New Delhi, March 14 (PTI): Under increasing pressure to cut interest rates on employees provident fund (EPF), the labour ministry is expected to shortly meet the Reserve Bank top brass to retain the current rate of 9.5 per cent.

Labour minister Sahib Singh Verma said, As of now there has been no move to cut the interest rates on EPF and no communication to that effect has been received from the finance ministry.

Asked if such a rate cut would be forced by the 1 percentage point cut in the special deposit scheme  a corpus in which EPF money is invested  Singh said he had asked for details on how the reduction would affect the fund.

It is to be noted that over three-fourth of the investments of EPF go into SDS and any cut in interest rate on SDS would mean cut in EPF rates in the days to come.

Finance ministry has been persuading the labour ministry to cut the interest rate on EPF in view of declining rates in the economy.